Blacks Strike Over South African Vote

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN, Special to The New York Times

Published: September 6, 1989

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 5—
Hundreds of thousands of South African blacks stayed home from work and school today to observe a general strike protesting the exclusion of the country's black majority from the parliamentary elections on Wednesday.

The two-day strike, called by an alliance of anti-apartheid groups calling itself the Mass Democratic Movement, enjoyed only partial support in the black townships around Johannesburg. But black workers overwhelmingly stayed away in Durban and Port Elizabeth, paralyzing some businesses.

Employers expect greater black absenteeism on Wednesday when the polls are open.

New demonstrations broke out across South Africa as the authorities tried to contain the so-called defiance campaign begun a month ago by opponents of apartheid. Students and Faculty Arrested

In one confrontation, 400 mostly white students and 40 largely white faculty and staff members, were arrested at the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of Natal when they tried to march to a local police station to protest what they called police violence.

On Monday the police opened fire with tear gas and shotguns at other university students protesting in nearby Durban, wounding 20 with birdshot.

In Cape Province, the police used dogs and whips to scatter about 500 white students and black workers demonstrating at Stellenbosch University, an Afrikaans-language institution.

In the general strike today, buses running at less than their usual full capacity carried workers commuting from the black townships of Soweto and Alexandra to jobs in Johannesburg. A black supporter of the strike said there was confusion about when the boycott would begin, but some employees were warned that they would lose their jobs if they did not show up. Trains Two-Thirds Empty

Reports from the Indian Ocean town of Port Elizabeth said black union members failed to show up at automobile assembly plants, and commuter trains ran more than two-thirds empty.

The University of Cape Town and the mixed-race University of the Western Cape, among other institutions, closed down in support of the strike.

A limpet mine planted early this morning on a rail line near Bontehewel in Cape Province also disrupted service. Another bomb exploded in the mixed-race suburb of Elsies River near Cape Town. No one was wounded. Church Sealed Off

Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu and other clergymen complained that the police sealed off the entrance to a Methodist church in Cape Town on Monday night with an armored car so people could not attend a worship service backing the defiance campaign.

They also said the police had entered St. George's Anglican Cathedral wearing their hats and carrying guns and whips in search of protesters. The dean, the Very Rev. Colin Jones, said he was also refused admittance.

Today the Archbishop held a service reconsecrating the cathedral after what he said had been its desecration.

''This act was performed by those representing a Government that claims to be Christian,'' Archbishop Tutu said, according to the South African Press Association. ''We are appalled that this kind of act is carried out in the name of God.'' The police denied they had desecrated churches.

The Rev. Allan Boesak, the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, was detained with Archbishop Tutu on Monday night. Today, Mr. Boesak held a service at his own church in the mixed-race community of Bellville, which has experienced a surge of anti-apartheid violence. The police surrounded the church with armored cars but did not interfere.

The National Party, which has held power since 1948, is expected to win the white election in Parliament, but with a reduced majority as a result of erosions in its support by shifts to the right-wing Conservative opposition and the new liberal Democratic Party.

South Africans of mixed-race and Indian descent are allowed to vote for their own smaller segregated chambers, but the majority are refusing to do so because they say the chambers do not reflect their real aspirations.